Dead Wood (2007)

Review by Tim-O



Starring: Emily Juniper
Directed by David Bryant, Sebastian Smith, and Richard Stiles
Two places that are popular locations for low budget horror films are deserts and forests. The reason is pretty obvious; it’s cheap. You can also hide from civilization while filming and are free from issues like traffic noise, gawking onlookers and nosey cops asking for permits. My friend Kevin Strange from Hack Movies was filming a scene in an alley behind his buddy’s tattoo shop and was completely harassed by cops who were convinced they had stumbled upon a major drug deal. They even roughed up one of his actors who was carrying a paint gun. (I guess the police thought that all the cameras, boom mic’s, light reflectors, and scripts lying around were some kind of cover.) Some of these movies, like “Evil Dead” and “The Hills Have Eyes”, end up becoming classics because of the energy, uniqueness of the story, and a lot of hard work and dedication in front of and behind the camera. Some, unfortunately, end up being like “Dead Wood”; dull and lifeless.

The opening of “Dead Wood” will be familiar to all horror fans; a man being chased through the woods by a rapidly moving POV shot. Yes, it looks ALOT like “Evil Dead” camera work and I did read that some people have been comparing this movie to Sam Raimi’s masterpiece. Well, for me, the comparisons stopped right there. The man being chased gets killed only feet away from what appears to be his campground. A girl emerges from a tent to investigate the ruckus. She finds… the opening credits. The next hour of the movie is literally nothing more than some people on a typical horror movie camping trip wandering around the woods. The only “horror” during this time is mysterious noises every once in a while that could be just as easily explained by a squirrel than any malevolent force. Eventually, the campers discover the girl from the first scene eating their food. After that, the campers start disappearing (off camera) one by one about as fast as my interest in this mess of a movie. Finally, the movie seems to reveal that there is some sort of tree-demon that can possess people and also turn them into trees. At least that’s what I got out of it.

“Dead Wood” is a frustrating movie. The movie keeps acting like it’s setting itself up for something interesting to happen, but it never does until the final act. Even when things start to pick up, they do so slowly that tension is never built and I, for one, didn’t care anymore. Had I not been watching the movie to review, I most assuredly would have turned it off about half way through. It’s just dull. The movie is British and has that washed out made for British T.V. look to it. The FX are decent but there really isn’t much of any until the last 20 minutes or so. The cast is pretty good considering what little they had to work with. The thing that shocked me is that the movie lists three directors. (Three?!? For what?!?)

After watching the end of the “Dead Wood”, I realized that there seemed to be a fairly interesting idea behind it. However, it’s execution could not be more of a misfire in my opinion. Another problem is that the movie makes absolutely no effort to shed any light on what the demon/ghost/creature is. It spends over an hour trying to make things seem foreboding and mysterious but only succeeds in being a marvelous sleep-aid. Heck, until they revealed the monster-person-thing I was rooting for the campers to be slaughtered by the rabid squirrels I imagined were making spooky noises throughout the film. Now THAT would have been fun! “Dead Wood” is as advertised in the title; dead. 2/10